Radical Sanctity

This book is about four radical and daring Catholic women – radical and daring because they chose to enter the American maelstrom of race. One, Katharine Drexel, became a saint in 2000. The others, Dorothy Day, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and Sister Thea Bowman were all declared Servants of God – the title bestowed by the Catholic Church on those on the first rung of official sanctity. Of the four women, three are white, one is black; two were nuns; two were laywomen; three were converts; two were mothers; one was divorced; one lived in a common law marriage and had an illegitimate child as well as an abortion and a suicide attempt. What makes for sanctity? Clearly, it doesn’t mean obeying all the rules!

Gail Lumet Buckley is the author of The Hornes: An American Family which became the focus of a PBS American Masters documentary on the life of her mother, Lena Horne. She is also the author of the national bestseller American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. And she is the author of The Black Calhouns, which the New York Times Book Review called, “[A] panoramic view of American society…Written in the style of a sweeping historical novel…This is history from the inside.”